


In defense of Umi

by ForrestFired



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: Essay, Not A Fanfiction, Umi defense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:27:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26599807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForrestFired/pseuds/ForrestFired
Summary: This aint a fanfic its a defensive essay type thingYes I actually spent time defending a hated character that doesn’t actually exist fight me
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	In defense of Umi

**Author's Note:**

> Go read her page on the Wikia for more info on her please. Its actually pretty interesting!

I think Umi is a misunderstood and overly hated character.  
I’m not a Umi-stan by any means but she is definitely not understood the best and there is some good reasons as to why.

Her whole thing is tough love for honoka. She really does care about her as she wouldn’t have joined muse and trained them so hard for their first concert if she didn’t. The thing is, it seems honoka is the only one that receives this tough love which makes it seem more like she dislikes her. This coupled with the s2 diet episode and the misunderstanding/just-overall-weird-plot-point, near the end of s1 where Umi gets mad at Honoka for quiting because Kotori is leaving japan and slaps her, makes Umi come of as a abusive friend when in reality I think its just unfortunate writing. The whole Diet episode is dumb because it doesn’t make any sense, they barely gained weight why are they acting like they gained 50 pounds? Anyway that whole episode is poorly written, its not so much as the characters were out of character, its more that the characters weren’t in the position that the episode was trying to convince us they were in. And the characters weren’t always in character. Hanayo in particular had a weirdly passive-aggressive moment.  
With the slap thing, had the slap come later when Honoka was sulking or Umi was trying to convince her to talk to kotori and Honoka was being stubborn or something and Umi tried slapping her back to her senses I think it could have worked. As it is; Umi slaps her out of frustration for being selfish which, imo is valid, but doesn’t help her case that much, and makes her seem impulsive to anger.

One of the reasons why I like Umi is; her strong character. By that I mean she has a very specific character that she sticks to, which you don’t see very often. Shes a ‘best-friend’ character who uses tough love to support, in a medium where Kotori’s character, which is slightly-silly supportive best-friend, is very common. Usually in anime Umi’s character is used for side characters or less important characters of the main cast, not the best friend. I don’t think either is bad, but Love Live is obviously way better at writing silly than serious. The best way to bring this to light is already written by the Love Live wikia so I’ll quote it here:  
“Umi has the qualities of a Yamato Nadeshiko, [this is due to her upbringing btw]or a proper and traditional Japanese lady. As such, she is generally shy when having to interact with unfamiliar people. Even with those she is comfortable with, she seems to act reserved by default unless provoked. She is highly intelligent and a very logical solution-seeker. Above all, she is extremely disciplined--nearly to a fault-- and as a result can often be hard on others. This is exemplified in Season 2 episode 7[diet episode] when she forces Honoka and Hanayo to do long training hours after they gain a bit of weight. However, this is never motivated by feelings of malice or dislike aimed at her friends. Umi's lack of sympathy stems from the fact that despite her excessive strictness towards her friends, Umi is the most unforgiving with/hardest on herself. She despises laziness, shortcuts, and/or cheating; she instead places a lot of value in hard work and perseverance.  
As self-destructive as this may be, these qualities combined with Umi's strong will makes her well-suited to leadership, which she often utilizes by being one of the main organizers of logistical or business-related action items for µ's. Where her leadership skills lack in sociability, she makes up in organizational excellence. This, in tandem with Umi's inclination to stay in the background when she can, makes Umi the perfect second-in-command to Honoka's leadership in µ's. In this manner, the two operate perfectly as the primary leaders in µ's. Honoka establishes and maintains µ's core of friendship and love for both members and fans alike through her ability to unify, inspire, and motivate. Umi facilitates the less enjoyable yet arguably more vital aspects of their idol work.”  
This is a great, yet complex way to say that she is highly intelligent and serious but has a hard time showing positive emotion and can’t really come out of her shell easily.

I notice that not being able to have well written serious things is a recurring theme through the entire series as a whole. Sometimes they nail ‘serious’ and sometimes they get away with not nailing it. And other times they don’t get away with it and its over focused on to the point where everyone either hates it or is annoyed. The latter doesn’t happen too often but when it does its usually Umi.  
Just remember without Umi, Muse doesnt work that well. She trained them up and helped support them at their weakest moment when it was just the 3 of them but also organized muse later on in its life.

I don’t really know how to end this thing so I’ll just say that I completely understand any hate to the character, I just want more people to realize what is actually happening and that Umi isn’t being a bitch because she hates anyone. Shes just a good grill who has a hard time and is trying her best. Frick i think writing this made me stan Umi.

Also she canonically wrote “Start:Dash!” we owe her.


End file.
